This is an extract from: Byzantine Monastic Foundation Documents: A Complete Translation of the Surviving Founders’ Typika and Testaments edited by John Thomas and Angela Constantinides Hero with the assistance of Giles Constable Published by Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection Washington, D.C. in five volumes as number 35 in the series Dumbarton Oaks Studies © 2000 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University Washington, D.C. Printed in the United States of America www.doaks.org/etexts.html 23. PAKOURIANOS 23. Pakourianos: Typikon of Gregory Pakourianos for the Monastery of the Mother of God Petritzonitissa in Backovo Date: December 1083 Translator: Robert Jordan Edition employed: Paul Gautier, “Le typikon du sébaste Grégoire Pakourianos,” REB 42 (1984), 5–145, at 19–133. Manuscript: Chios Koraes 1598 (13th c.)1 Other translations: French, by Gautier, “Pakourianos,” 18–132; Russian, by V. A. Arutyunova- Fidanyan, Typik Gregoriya Pakuriana (Yerevan, 1978), pp. 68–121, with commentary, pp. 122– 235; modern Georgian, by Simon Kaouchtschischvili, Typikon Gregorii Pacuriani ( = Georgica. Scriptorum byzantinorum excerpta ad Georgiam pertinentia 5) (Tbilisi, 1963).2 Institutional History This foundation, which still survives, is located in Bulgaria near modern Backovo in the Chaya River valley surrounded by the Rhodope Mountains, south of Plovdiv (Byzantine Philippoupolis). The epithet Petritzonitissa3 is derived from the neighboring fortification of Petritzos mentioned [2] in the typikon below. A. Career of the Founder The founder Gregory Pakourianos has been claimed by both Georgians and Armenians, leading to a lively scholarly debate over his ancestry.4 Prior to drawing up his typikon for Petritzonitissa in 1083, he had been engaged in a military career for at least twenty years, starting with his partici- pation in the unsuccessful defense of Ani against the Seljuk leader Alp Arslan in 1064. He served later under emperors Michael VII Doukas (1071–78), Nikephoros III Botaneiates (1078–81), and Alexios I Komnenos (1081–1118) in various responsible positions on both the eastern and the western frontiers of the empire. He was a monastic patron even before the foundation of Petritzonitissa, joining his brother Apasios in 1074 in making a donation to the famous Georgian monastery of Iveron on Mount Athos.5 Later, Nikephoros III granted him estates in the vicinity of Philippoupolis, possibly including the land on which Petritzonitissa was built. Alexios Komnenos appointed him megas domestikos of the West and gave him many more properties in the Balkans.6 There is a possibility that there was already a Georgian monastery at Petritzos.7 Anna Komnene mentions a monastery of this name that belonged to Empress Maria, daughter of the Georgian king Bagrat IV (1027–72) and spouse of Michael VII Doukas and later also Nikephoros III Botaneiates. Also, a Georgian manuscript is attributed to two monks “from Petritzos” in the year 1030. In any event, the construction of Pakourianos’ monastery took place under the supervi- sion of the monk Gregory Vanskos.8 Pakourianos may well not have been present at the site, [ 507 ] ELEVENTH CENTURY unlike the case documented later in (29) Kosmosoteira [75] in which the founder Isaac Komnenos personally supervised the construction of the church for which that document was written. Ac- cording to the historian Anna Komnene, who says he was of a noble Armenian lineage, Gregory Pakourianos fell in battle against the Patzinaks, apparently at the village of Belyakovo, north of Philippoupolis, in 1086.9 B. Later History of the Foundation10 1. Era of Georgian Administration For a long time the monastery remained under Georgian control, as Pakourianos had intended, certainly throughout the twelfth century. There are two mostly unpublished bead rolls preserved in the library of the modern monastery, one dating from around 1600 and another from the mid- seventeenth century, that contain lists of the foundation’s donors and superiors.11 Although the monastery may have come at least temporarily under the control of the Bulgarian Tsar Kalojan (1197–1207) in 1206 when he conquered the region of the Rhodope Mountains, Georgian monks were still present in the thirteenth century. Judging from a silver icon mount of the Mother of God associated with this monastery that bears a Georgian inscription dated to 1311, Petritziotissa had become a pilgrimage site for other Georgian monks.12 The monastery lost its Georgian character, however, by the fourteenth century. 2. Era of Bulgarian Administration In 1344, Tsar Ivan Alexander (1331–71) established Bulgarian control more firmly, and Bulgarian monks were established in the monastery at this time. The Bulgarian tsar restored the monastery and endowed it richly. The immediate area of the Rhodope Mountains came under Ottoman con- trol in 1363. After the conquest of Bulgaria by the Turks under Murad I in 1393, the Bulgarian Patriarch, Evtimij of Turnovo, went into exile at this monastery. In the early fifteenth century, Constantine Kostenechki came to study there under Evtimij’s students Andrew and Andronikos. The monastery was reportedly destroyed by the Ottomans in the second half of the fifteenth or the early part of the sixteenth century and was left deserted for nearly a century. The foundation, by then known by the Bulgarian name Petritsoni, was rebuilt towards the end of the sixteenth century by the Bulgarian nobleman Georgi and his son Constantine. A new refectory was built in 1601, and a new church in 1604, both still in existence. Life-size donor portraits of the new founders appear on the eastern wall of the narthex of the seventeenth-century church. 3. Fate of the Typikon and the Foundation Lemerle (Cinq études, p. 122) believed that the original Greek version of the typikon was pre- served at Petritsoni until at least 1628 (but see Gautier, “Pakourianos,” p. 12, n. 19). It had long since disappeared by the time Bulgaria recovered its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878. Greek monks were in residence at the monastery then, but the Bulgarian and Greek ecclesi- astical authorities soon engaged in a dispute over control of the foundation, which was richly endowed.13 During the course of this conflict, apparently in 1888, the bilingual Greek-Georgian manuscript on which the best current editions of the two surviving versions of the typikon are based had been taken away to the library of Koraes on Chios, then still an Ottoman possession. Georgios Mousaios, a Greek of Stenimachos who deserves the credit for bringing the typikon to [ 508 ] 23. PAKOURIANOS the attention of the modern scholarly world in his Jena dissertation in 1888, had had to use an inferior manuscript of 1792, itself a modern Greek translation, for his first edition of the work. Previously, he had failed to gain the cooperation of the monastery’s monks or of Gregory, the metropolitan of Philippoupolis, to gain access to what he mistakenly believed to be the “original” manuscript of the typikon. Later, Mousaios was to bring a complaint before the patriarch of Constantinople that Gregory had instigated its removal from the monastery. Meanwhile, the quar- rel over the ownership of the monastery was not resolved until 1894, when it was definitively awarded to the Bulgarian exarchate. C. Architectural Evidence 1. The Backovo Kostnitsa (Ossuary)14 The ossuary, built as a tomb for Gregory and his brother Apasios between 1074 and 1083 (so Grishin, “Evidence,” p. 93), is the only structure at Backovo dating back to Byzantine times. It is located a short distance to the east of the present monastery on a steep mountain ridge. There are fourteen tombs in the stone floor of the first story (the crypt). The upper story served as a chapel and contains two wall tombs. There are five niche images in the chapel: donor portraits of Gregory and Apasios Pakourianos, who are shown holding a model of the original katholikon, a domed church with two side chapels; George and Gabriel, two founders (ktetores) of an uncertain date; Sts. Constantine and Helena; St. John the Theologian; and Ivan Alexander, all identified by Greek inscriptions. Grishin (“Evidence,” p. 96) dates these to 1344–63. 2. Plan of the Original Katholikon Although the typikon refers [1] to three churches dedicated to the Dormition of the Mother of God, John the Forerunner, and St. George, excavations conducted at the site in 1955 indicate that there was one katholikon dedicated to the Virgin with side chapels dedicated to each of the saints (Grishin, “Evidence,” p. 91). This confirms the evidence offered by the fourteenth-century donor portrait of Gregory and Apasios Pakourianos, executed at a time when the original church was still standing. Analysis This is a moderately progressive document in the reform tradition. The author Pakourianos, who may have already served as the patron of a traditional private foundation [31], demonstrates [18] a keen perception of the problems of that form of organization which led him to choose the now popular independent and self-governing constitution then being promoted by contemporary mo- nastic reformers. While the author’s reform sympathies may seen lukewarm, especially in com- parison to the fervent (22) Evergetis, the fairer comparison is with the contemporary (19) Attaleiates and its considerably less imaginative, tradition-bound author. Passing over (22) Evergetis, if indeed it was known to him, Pakourianos chose a more indulgent and less rigorously separatist disciplinary regime for his monks by adopting the typikon of the Constantinopolitan Panagios as a model (see below). Perhaps the need to enforce isolation from the lay world was less severe for an institution located in the countryside and made up of monks (former soldiers among them) who could not speak Greek, and thus would have fewer outside ties anyway. [ 509 ] ELEVENTH CENTURY To meet official requirements as well as the needs of his own community, Pakourianos had his typikon drawn up [33] in three languages: Greek, Georgian and Armenian.